


Sleep Anxiety

by sciencepun (orphan_account)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Apathetic mental state, Apathy, Character Study, Holy shit u already know im channeling from these tags wow, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Illness, Other, canonverse, dear god, its not what it looks like i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 08:39:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6187744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sciencepun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(DISCLAIMER: Okay so this was good to write as a form of self-therapy, so, first of all: I'm not romanticising anxiety/depression/self-harm. I know what it's like to experience these things and it isn't beautiful, fun or poetic. And it certainly doesn't go away when you get into a relationship.)</p><p>I'm writing from Kenma's point of view as he suffers from general anxiety disorder and suffers extreme episodes of 'sleep anxiety' despite not being an insomniac. He finds it difficult to fall asleep easily and Kuro looks out for him during these periods of time and helps him find new methods of falling asleep and such. </p><p>(Again, I am in no way claiming that you need someone else to cure your mental illness for you; all I am hinting at is that sometimes it's difficult to deal with things alone and having help can make the ride easier, not cure you completely. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Anxiety

The story of how Kozume Kenma discovered what a hospital was, and what exactly it did, its purpose in society, wasn't an easy one to tell. While most children seven and under ended up in hospital for broken bones and immune disorders, he had ended up there for crying until he was so dehydrated that he passed out. Or, at least, that was the first time. Hazy scenes from the incident would occasionally swim through his conscious mind as if reminding him that he was never to be free of his distant past. He was forced to recall the shouting and the way his fingers shook when he curled up into a ball on the floor. He was forced to remember how he had thought that it would make him a smaller target for the cruel words flying through the air like bullets, ricocheting around the living room. He had to acknowledge the hoarse pleas for him to take pudgy baby hands away from his ears and look his mother in the eye. The camera feed of his visual memory would cut out at that point, only to resume in a crowded room filled with screaming children and praying parents.

Over the course of the night, doctors shone bright lights into his tired eyes and tapped his knees with small silver hammers, all the while asking deeply personal questions about his private life. Things that they really oughtn't ask a four year old.

They slapped a diagnosis- general anxiety disorder-- on him and sent him home with a warm-looking social worker to check out his home life. And, what he later figured was un-coincidentally, a week later his father vanished never to return.

Was there some sort of restraining order?

An abuse scandal?

Another woman?

The older he got, the less he cared to find out. The less he cared about this blurry, distant father figure.

The social worker, Kuroo Wakana, had a young son: Tetsurou. Kept in Wakana's small apartment together while Kenma's mother worked, they grew close, mainly as Kuro was the only person Kenma's age who had any idea what was really going on with him. The other kids were scared by the dark circles around his eyes and the scratches so messy where he had clawed at his face in fear; they didn't like to come near. Then again, he supposed, he hadn't really wanted them to.

Kuro didn't mind that he looked like a baby zombie.

Kuro didn't care that occasionally, he would curl up into a ball on the floor and rock himself back and forth until he had the courage to get up again.

He didn't care: all that mattered was that Kenma was his friend.

Of course, in a perfect world things would've gotten better from that point and Kenma would've been living the mentally stable dream by the time he hit thirteen.

How convenient that such a world could never exist.

Lying on the kitchen floor, making eye contact with the stars through the glass panels of the door, Kenma began to reevaluate his life choices. Mainly the choice to look at the stars.

They glittered so smugly against the inky backdrop of the midnight sky.

Bastards.

The tick tock of his bedside clock echoed dully in his head. Always ticking. So rude: it loved counting down the seconds until his tragic end: the clock wanted him dead; he was sure of it.

The creak of the door sounded like a cry of agony to his shattered mind. "Kenma?"

"I couldn't sleep." He didn't bother to sit up- make eye contact with his mother-- these things would make no difference to her opinion of him. One which he could now feel changing and morphing in her heart, yet he could not find the capacity within him to care.

He was completely burnt out.

"Why are you holding a knife?"

"I don't know." He could answer only honestly, fingers loosening their grip around the glossy handle of the instrument of pain, allowing his mother to prize it from his hand.

"Come on," Her hand dangled before his eyes: an offer. "We're going to hospital."

"I'm fine."

She pulled him up. "I don't know that."

"Won't you trust me?"

"As much as I'd love to," she ran her fingers gently over his cheekbone, "you're my only child, and I have to look out for you. Take every precaution."

"I really don't-"

She steered him through the back door, his bare feet coming into contact with the damp of the light night ground. All of a sudden, emotion flooded through his veins.

Cool, round two.

His state of panic elevated. Desperately, he tried to tear himself free of her grip.

Aiko Kozume wasn't the type to give up, letting the things she cared for most slip through her grip like sand. Kenma knew. Her force was a reminder that he still wasn't yet as powerful as he should be. Usually, boys were stronger than their mothers by the time they reached their teenage years.

"Please," He wrapped his hands gently around her wrist. The only weapon he had. "Let me get dressed first."

"Kenma?" Her deluxe, sweet-as-diabetes voice echoed softly, bouncing around the cold metal wall of the lift in the morning after their shared panic. "You are my only child; I have no one else. Everything I do is to keep you alive. Please understand this."

"I only slept two hours on that bed of rocks."

"I know, I'm sorry." She was cautious in the way she spoke.

The lift doors jolted open to a corridor just as empty and unhelpful in its direction as the doctors that had seen him just a few hours prior. All they'd done was ask him questions he'd heard a million times before in tired and toneless voices, as if all they really wanted was to get him out of the way so that they could treat some more exciting cases.

"Two hours to last a whole day."

Aiko sighed, stepping into the corridor; she lead him gently by the arm to the front desk: taken care of by tired receptionists with even more tired hairstyles that had fallen apart as the night had turned to day.

"Right! Let's go home."

**Author's Note:**

> I am a lonely muffin so please, if you relate to anything here and want to talk, I'm here.  
> (beta read by lovedherdead who is also 100% here for u. fact.)


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